Lives of Several Imprisoned Journalists and Netizens in Danger
Around 30 members and supporters of Reporters Without Borders and Iranian activists demonstrated outside the Iran Air office on the Champs Elysées in Paris this afternoon in protest against the arbitrary arrest and torture of journalists and netizens in Iran, some of whom have already died in detention and others are in danger of dying.
Five of the demonstrators played the part of journalists who have been targeted. They were made up to look as though they had been beaten or tortured, with whip marks, bruises, split eyebrows, broken noses and so on. The demonstrators brandished placards saying “Iran: solitary confinement, torture, murders” and “Free journalists in Iran” and distributed flyers.
Today is the ninth of anniversary of Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi’s death in detention as a result of mistreatment by judicial officials in Tehran’s Evin prison. Deaths such as Kazemi’s go completely unpunished in the Islamic Republic. Reporters Without Borders calls for more vigilance as other journalists could die at the hands of its prison torturers.
“We fear for the lives of several imprisoned journalists who are ill, whose physical and psychological health has been undermined, and who are being held in the same jail or in the same conditions as Kazemi when she received the blow that killed her,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“We draw the international community’s particular attention to the cases of Narges Mohammadi,Mohammad Sadegh Kabodvand, Bahman Ahamadi Amoee, Arash Honarvar Shojai andMohammad Solimaninya, and we call for the immediate and unconditional release of all those who have been arrested for reporting news and information, a legitimate activity, or for exercising their right to free expression.”